Durham lies in north-eastern England on the North Sea. In
1974 Tyne and Wear was formed out
of parts of Durham and Northumberland and Cleveland
out of parts of Durham and Yorkshire. Both Tyne and Wear and Cleveland
have since been broken up into smaller authorities.

Formed
part of the kingdom of Northumbria
which itself had been formed from the smaller kingdoms of Bernicia
and Deira. Deira reached from the Humber
in the south to the river Tees in the north. North of the Tees reaching
as far as the Forth of Firth lay the kingdom of Bernicia of which
Bamburgh was the capital.

Areas of Outstanding
Natural Beauty

The North
Pennines AONB is the second largest in England and Wales (after
the Cotswolds) and was designated in 1988. The protected area spreads
over the three counties of Northumberland, Cumbria and Durham and
was once the location of intensive lead mining, the decline of which
has left its mark on the local landscape. The area marks the northern
end of the mountain
range which runs down the centre of the country to Derbyshire,
"the backbone of Britain".

Historic
Events

Major
Battles

In
1346 the English defeated an invading Scottish army at the Battle
of Neville's Cross near Durham. During the battle
the Scottish monarch David
II
was captured and the king stayed a prisoner of Edward III until
his release in 1357.

Durham
University received its Royal Charter in 1837, having been
founded in 1832. If the founding date is taken rather than the
date it received its Royal Charter it is England's third oldest
university after Oxford
and Cambridge.
Otherwise this distinction would go to the University
of London (Royal Charter 1836) or one of its constituent
colleges: King's College London (founded 1829) or University
College London (founded 1826).

Sir
Anthony Eden
born as Robert Anthony Eden in 1897 at Windlestone Hall in Bishop
Auckland took over from Winston Churchill as Prime Minister from 1955-57.
He was responsible for British forces occupying the Suez Canal Zone
in 1956, a step which led to the Suez
Crisis and severe criticism at home and abroad, criticism which
did not subside even after the troops were withdrawn. Eden resigned
in 1957 due to poor health.Sir
Anthony EdenThe
Suez Crisis

The scholar and historian St
Bede(known later as the Venerable Bede)
was born at Monkton in 673. After studying at the monastery at Monkwearmouth
(now in Sunderland), he was moved while still young back to a new
monastery in Jarrow. Here he would later be ordained as a priest and
spend the rest of his life studying and teaching. In 731 he completed
his most famous work Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
a key work for understanding early English history. He died in 735
and after originally being buried at Jarrow his bones were moved in
the 11th century to Durham
Cathedral.

The
poetElizabeth
Barrett Browning was born as Elizabeth Barrett at Coxhoe
Hall in 1806. In 1845 she married the poet Robert Browning and the
following year they emigrated to Italy.